Tag: Psychiatric

“….India, where a lot of clinical trials have already begun, is likely to get a breakthrough anti-malarial drug Tafenoquine by 2018. The drug, a one-day two-dose treatment, has already entered phase-three trials and once approved will replace the current 14-day treatment for plasmodium vivax malaria, which is prevalent in India…’

“…Many of them have since suffered an illness classified as an Acquired Brain Injury. There is sturdy scientific proof that ABI can occur after treatment with mefloquine. Scientists from the US military research institute that developed the drugs found that mefloquine was able to cause a “lasting or permanent” brain injury. Other scientists at the same institute found tafenoquine, an experimental drug that has not been registered for sale anywhere in the world, “is more neurotoxic than mefloquine”….

Soldiers as Guinea Pigs: the Case of Mefloquine and Tafenoquine

The anti-malarial drug trial scandal that has embroiled the Australian Defence Force for the last two years simply won’t go away, despite the government’s best efforts to whitewash the controversy with a flawed “military justice” inquiry.

There are growing calls for a public inquiry to investigate ethical breaches which occurred during a series of Army Malaria Institute (AMI) clinical trials conducted in Bougainville and Timor Leste from 1999 to 2002.

The drugs in question are mefloquine, a neurotoxicant able to cause a “lasting or permanent” brain injury in a sizeable minority of users, and the experimental drug tafenoquine. The latter was found to be “more neurotoxic than mefloquine” by scientists from the US military research institute which developed both drugs.

Tafenoquine was given to more than 1,500 ADF personnel during these trials, while mefloquine was used on 1,300 personnel. Mefloquine has probably been given to an additional 2,000 personnel since its introduction in the early 1990s.

Hundreds of Australian veterans have since been diagnosed with serious neurological and psychiatric disorders, often mistaken for post-traumatic stress disorder. Many maintain they were compelled to participate in the trials. The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) has belatedly launched a health outreach program, admitting that the first cases “could be the tip of the iceberg”.

Media attention has to date focused on the health concerns of those affected and the ethical question of whether the subjects provided fully informed consent.

Yet a deeper question is emerging, namely a fundamental conflict between the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the public interests of the ADF. This could even result in criminal charges against ADF medical officials who conducted the trials and now hold senior military appointments.

How could the ADF leadership have allowed this to happen?

Mefloquine and tafenoquine are both products of the US Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) anti-malarial drug discovery program which commenced during the Vietnam War. The results of early military tests of mefloquine were given to the manufacturer Roche in one of the first public-private partnerships of its kind. These questionable results were then used to shortcut the approvals process by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulators.

By the late 1990s mefloquine was well known for its serious side effects and fell out of favour to the extent it is no longer manufactured by Roche in many countries. Linked to numerous war crimes, murders and suicides over the last 15 years, mefloquine is now banned or regarded as a drug of last resort.

Tafenoquine is already repeating this tragic history, with the direct involvement of WRAIR and the closely affiliated AMI.

The ADF’s deployments to Bougainville and Timor Leste provided an ideal opportunity for AMI and WRAIR to conduct large-scale drug trials on a captive pool of “volunteers”. Tafenoquine and mefloquine were tested on almost every battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. The results of several of these trials have not been published, presumably because they were unfavourable.

Of the reports that were published, none commented on the serious adverse effects that emerged from the trials. One report that was published found there was “no statistical difference” between tafenoquine and mefloquine in the rate of neurological and psychiatric side effects. Many of the subjects are to this day admitted to psychiatric hospitals or have subsequently suicided — yet the ADF has refused to conduct follow up health studies.

A co-author of the published study has been stonewalling the proposed outreach program for years. Recently, he falsely informed doctorsinvolved in the outreach program that there were “no recorded neuropsychiatric side effects” from tafenoquine; contrary to his original report which found one in eight of his subjects experienced such side effects.

The results of this trial were re-analysed in a 2014 paper co-authored by the current Director of AMI to find that tafenoquine is 100% effective in preventing malaria. The lead author of this paper is a former WRAIR employee who now owns a niche pharmaceutical company awarded a contract by the US Army to develop the drug for registration with both the FDA and the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration. Should the FDA approve, his company would be given a tradeable “priority review voucher” worth several hundred million dollars.

In the 1990s the Canadian government responded to a similar scandal involving an unlawful mefloquine drug trial on peacekeeping troops in Somalia by disbanding the regiment that was subjected to the experiment.

On the evidence already publicly available, a more appropriate response from the Australian government would be to disband AMI and prohibit the conduct of clinical drug trials on ADF personnel deployed on military operations. The ADF is clearly incapable of providing the corporate oversight needed to protect the interests of its troops against those of the pharmaceutical industry.

VETERANS who believe they have been adversely affected by Defence-sanctioned antimalarial drug trials are angry they were not consulted about the delivery of an urgent “outreach program”.

Official letters about the program only began circulating yesterday after the Bulletin revealed last week an outreach program was to be held in Townsville next week for former ADF members and others concerned about mefloquine or tafenoquine.

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs told the Bulletin it also planned to begin an advertising campaign for the program from today.

Melbourne-based veteran Michael Kruizinga said he was given tafenoquine after contracting malaria on the drug Doxycycline before being given mefloquine on a second tour of East Timor.

He recently helped organise a health forum in Melbourne and said people there were desperate for help and would have liked to be consulted on a possible program.

“It’s absolutely pathetic the way the Government has played this because this program is absolutely necessary,” he said. “Groups have been pushing for this outreach program and it seems they’ve just rushed it through to get us off their backs.”

DVA said the concept for the outreach was developed by the DVA-Defence Links steering committee.

“All material that is provided to attendees of the outreach program will be available online, supplementing current information on both DVA and Defence websites,” a DVA spokesman said.

“This will include the names of Townsville-based GPs who are currently known to DVA as being able to assist individuals who may present with symptoms or conditions that they attribute to having taken mefloquine while in the ADF.”

Six sessions are being offered and can accommodate about 50 attendees at the Townsville VAN Office.

“The Townsville outreach sessions will be evaluated and this will help inform the Government as to what additional steps should be taken to assist veterans with concerns,” the spokesman said.

Retried colonel Ray Martin said the Government made an election commitment to set up an open dialogue, but he believed this had not occurred.

“To announce a program with little notice, when many are unavailable, away or on leave, without consultation, input or feedback — from those most affected is very disappointing,” he said.

PM must support Diggers used as drug guinea pigs, writes army officer Stuart McCarthy

WHEN you sign up to fight for your country, you accept you have to put your life on the line. In recent years, scores of those who have served in dangerous or inhospitable places haven’t made it home. To them we are grateful.

Those such as the 41 who were killed in 14 years of the Afghanistan War, faced traditional opponents. That enemy carried weapons. They laid roadside bombs. And the horrors of what many experience last well beyond deployment and into an unsettled civilian life. Many, as revealed by government figures last week, have taken their own lives.

But PTSD isn’t the only hazard that can cause impairment in our Australian veterans. Since the late 1980s, 5000 personnel were administered two antimalarial drugs — mefloquine and the experimental tafenoquine — when sent on military service in countries with a malaria risk.

Major Stuart McCarthy in Iraq during 2006. Picture: Courtesy of the McCarthy family.

Many of them have since suffered an illness classified as an Acquired Brain Injury. There is sturdy scientific proof that ABI can occur after treatment with mefloquine. Scientists from the US military research institute that developed the drugs found that mefloquine was able to cause a “lasting or permanent” brain injury. Other scientists at the same institute found tafenoquine, an experimental drug that has not been registered for sale anywhere in the world, “is more neurotoxic than mefloquine”.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in August, on the evidence of an alarming veteran suicide rate, that “we have to go beyond the memorials and the monuments and focus on the men and women, the real challenges they face, ensuring that they are supported”. This week, Veterans’ Affairs Minister Dan Tehan and Health Minister Sussan Ley are expected to launch the government’s veteran suicide prevention initiative. With more than 60 veterans having taken their own lives this year, this response is welcome.

Turnbull’s words are encouraging, but there is a glaring omission from his government’s response thus far — an outreach and treatment program for veterans affected by exposure to mefloquine and tafenoquine. Although Defence has recognised that mefloquine can have long-term health effects, Defence and Veterans’ Affairs have initiated no consultation to ensure the advice they are providing to those affected is suitable. Yet Australian veterans who suffer serious, chronic illness since their exposure to the drugs are in the hundreds.

Difficulties in correctly diagnosing this type of brain injury have meant that few of those affected have been able to access the appropriate rehabilitation, medical and other support services. Most who have sought medical help have been diagnosed and medicated for PTSD or other mental illnesses without having been referred to brain injury specialists. That misdiagnosis has led to further disabling drug reactions, family breakdowns, homelessness and suicide.

During this year’s election, the government committed to formal consultation with affected veterans and their families to address these concerns. Despite news of an “outreach” event in Townsville this month, the consultation has not happened. Discussions with senior Veterans’ Affairs medical officers indicated that “consultation was not required”. Meanwhile, Defence and Veterans’ Affairs officials have trivialised the nature and extent of the problems, unfairly suggesting those affected are exaggerating or inventing their symptoms.

The numerous diagnoses of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depression and anxiety, seizures, hallucinations and psychosis, suicide attempts and suicide indicate this is a serious issue. Equally serious steps need to be taken by the government to embrace those suffering and give them suitable assistance.

Providing the right assistance is not hard. There are existing ABI outreach and rehabilitation programs available in every state that receive significant federal funding. Indeed, some fortunate veterans who have persisted to obtain the right treatment are already receiving those services. Sadly, these are in single figures.

If Turnbull is serious about addressing veteran suicides — and there is no reason to believe he isn’t — he should now direct both ministers to make those programs available to all veterans who were exposed to these neurotoxic drugs during their service to the country.

Stuart McCarthy is an army officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ethiopia and Eritrea and Bougainville. He is undergoing rehabilitation for an acquired brain injury after being exposed to mefloquine and tafenoquine

Therapeutic Goods Administration warned military doctors before using experimental drug on soldiers

Henry Belot

Andrew George, a former soldier who appeared in Army Reserve ads, claims tafenoquine left him with damaging side effects. Photo: Supplied

Documents obtained by Fairfax Media reveal the Therapeutic Goods Administration wrote to senior doctors at the Balmoral Naval Hospital in Sydney to warn they had no authority to acquire or use the drug under existing arrangements.

Six months later, the hospital received 13 capsules of tafenoquine from pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to use on a 26-year-old on the condition it would not be held responsible for side-effects.

The beginning of a letter sent to military doctors by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The company urged the doctors to contact US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command within 24 hours of serious or unexpected reactions by soldiers. It also told doctors to supply detailed records of patient history and health outcomes.

Tafenoquine remains banned in Australia and has been linked to blood cell damage and anaemia. Common side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches and eye disease. It was trialled on 461 ADF personnel as part of a clinical trial in East Timor during 2000-01.

A Department of Defence spokesman said the TGA warning related to the treatment of soldiers with recurrent malaria rather than the clinical trials. But correspondence reveals Australia’s drug regulator did not shy from expressing concern about the drug.

Military doctors were initially granted full access to tafenoquine although this was overruled once the TGA realised the doctors would not comply with relevant safety regulations.

The letter, sent by the TGA’s director of drug safety Dr Leonie Hunt, told doctors they were not authorised to use the drug outside a controlled clinical environment and without the approval of a hospital ethics committee.

“It has been brought to my attention that you do not satisfy these requirements and therefore the authorisation should not have been issued,” Dr Hunt said.

“Accordingly you are no longer authorised to supply or prescribe tafenoquine for use in defence personnel for the treatment of recurrent vivax malaria.”

According to the Department of Defence, the warning was the result of “an administrative error” caused when military doctors applied for the drug under the wrong subsection of the relevant act.

The doctors were eventually granted the drug for “compassionate use” under a special access scheme that judged patient needs on a case-by-case basis. Another 30 ADF personnel were treated under the scheme after a spike in malaria cases during 2001-02.

A TGA spokeswoman said the only way to acquire the dug remained the special access scheme.

“Were the TGA to become aware that unregistered products were being supplied without obtaining appropriate exemption, the matter would be investigated,” she said.

GlaxoSmithKline told the military doctors all patients needed to be provided with information about the drug including alternative options. Written consent forms were also required.

“An integral component and condition of approval for supply of an experimental drug is the documentation of safety and efficacy data,” the letter said.

“It is extremely important that we, as the manufacturers of tafenoquine, obtain detailed information regarding treatment and we ask for your co-operation to document details of patient history and therapeutic outcome.”

Patient outcomes were recorded by military doctors at the Australian Army Malaria Institute and published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 2007.

According to the journal article, the authors were full-time ADF employees and received funding from GlaxoSmithKline to present their findings. They insist no other potential conflicts of interest existed.

Andrew George, a former infantry soldier and public relations officer with the Army Reserve, was treated with tafenoquine in Sydney and claims it left him with damaging side effects.

Mr George, who features in promotional material for the reserves, said he was given the drug after being diagnosed with malaria but does not recall giving informed consent after a detailed explanation of the drug.

He is one of many veterans seeking answers about the drugs with many believing it complicated their diagnosis and management of post-traumatic stress-disorder.

“I am still proud of my service,” he said. “I am proud to have done what my dad did – a Vietnam veteran,” Mr George said.

Australian Defence Medical Ethics Committee documents, released late last year under freedom of information laws, showed the ADF was concerned about whether the trials were properly explained to soldiers.

“It would be preferable to have all information conveyed openly and honestly to every member involved in current and previous tafenoquine trials,” the document said. “This will markedly reduce the risk of a perceived cover-up”

Since the release of the document, the Department of Defence has made a catalogue of information about the trials and the drug available for veterans online.

Surgeon General of the ADF, Air Vice-Marshal Tracy Smart, has also met with veterans at a community event in Townsville and insisted the military was being transparent as possible.

Last month, a senate committee called on the Australian Defence Force to explain all potentially damaging side effects of the antimalarial drugs to every veteran or soldier who has taken them since 2001.

Defence force admits soldier shouldn’t have been included in East Timor anti-malaria drug trial

The Australian Defence Force has acknowledged it accidentally exposed one of its soldiers to controversial anti-malarial drugs during trials in East Timor, despite the soldier having a medical history of mental illness which should have precluded his involvement.

Key points:

ADF apologises for including soldier Chris Salter in anti-malarial drug trial in East Timor

Mr Salter should have been precluded from trial due to history of mental illness

First time ADF has publicly accepted it made mistakes during Timor drug trials

The soldier, Chris Salter, developed chronic depression and psychosis after inclusion in the Timor trials of psychoactive drugs mefloquine and tafenoquine.

His illness has led to repeated suicide attempts and more than a dozen stays in psychiatric hospitals. He is unable to work or care for his family.

Since the trials, which included thousands of Australian soldiers between 2001 and 2003, a small group of veterans have developed severe mental illnesses.

They believe the ADF erred by giving them the drugs even though there was a significant body of research which pointed to the drugs’ side effects, which in some cases are permanent.

The letter to Mr Salter is the first public case of the ADF accepting it made mistakes during the Timor drug trials. It may open the way for other veterans to seek similar apologies and could lead to compensation.

“Following the disclosure by your wife on the 7.30 Report (sic) in June that you were prescribed mefloquine despite a history of depression, I determined that I should conduct a review of your medical documents,” the ADF’s Surgeon-General, Tracy Smart, wrote in a letter late last month.

In that same letter Air Vice Marshal Smart wrote: “I apologise on behalf of Defence that you were prescribed mefloquine given your history of depression. This represented an unacceptable risk.”

‘It’s happening to a lot of people … and it will continue happening’

Ms Salter has become a vocal critic of Defence, and says the ADF has failed to provide assistance to people who are suffering chronic illness as a result of taking the drugs.

After her husband received his letter she asked people in a mefloquine and tafenoquine support group on Facebook whether anyone had a similar experience.

“I’ve had three or four responses of people who’ve come back and said yes, they were diagnosed with depression and didn’t have a medical to see whether they were eligible [for inclusion in the drug trials],” Ms Salter told 7.30.

All those veterans could be eligible for formal apologies and compensation.

The high stakes of Ms Salter’s campaign for recognition were highlighted two weeks ago, when one of the Timor veterans, Chris Stiles, took his life.

Since then a group of mefloquine and tafenoquine-affected veterans in Townsville have told 7.30 of their anger over the death of Mr Stiles, who was given the drugs and experienced a significant downturn in his mental health.

“It’s happening to a lot of people, it’s not just Chris. Chris is just the latest one, and it will continue happening,” said one of Mr Stiles’s Timor colleagues, Colin Brock.

The veterans say Defence and the Department of Veterans Affairs have failed to provide meaningful assistance and have left many who served in East Timor to shoulder the burden of mental and physical illness caused or exacerbated by the drugs on their own.

Defence has been approached for a response.

Banned or limited by other militaries around the world

Mr Brock helped carry Mr Stiles’s coffin to his grave a week ago. He was one of two of the pallbearers who were given the drugs in Timor and have since developed mental illnesses that have seen them admitted to psychiatric hospital suffering a host of mental and physical symptoms.

Mefloquine — also known as Lariam — and tafenoquine are psychoactive anti-malarials that, according to the World Health Organisation and neurological researchers, have a history of links to severe depression, anxiety, irrational anger, memory loss, suicidal thoughts, psychosis and hallucinations.

Across the world militaries are seeking to ban or limit the use of the drugs, given serious concerns about their side effects.

In 2013 US special operations forces banned the drugs after the Food and Drug Administration issued its highest alert — a so-called “black box” warning.

“Neurologic side effects can occur at any time during drug use, and can last for months to years after the drug is stopped or can be permanent,” the FDA said.

Last year a UK parliamentary inquiry found the Ministry of Defence prescribed the drug too liberally and recommended it be redesignated as a “drug of last resort”.

The ADF’s Inspector-General has launched an inquiry into the East Timor drug trials. He is due to report by the end of this year.

Dylan Tighe: ‘Instead of relieving my distress, I felt the drugs were compounding it’ The first time Dylan Tighe, who is 34, attended a psychiatrist was at the age of 18, after experiencing a prolonged bout of depression. “I just felt listless. There was a complete lack of desire and absence of joy that was overwhelming. It was an experience that would be repeated again,” says the award-winning theatre director.

After a brief consultation, he was prescribed Seroxat, an antidepressant, for the best part of a year. It was the beginning of several years of being prescribed a range of antidepressants and mood-stabilisers which, he says, had often severe side effects, such as an increased heart rate, short-term memory loss and sexual problems. In the meantime, he felt other options weren’t being made available, such as talk therapy, which might helped him resolve underlying issues. “Drugs were always the first port of call. There was a dismissive attitude towards talk therapy . . . instead of relieving my distress, I felt the drugs were compounding it.

“My engagement with the service and lack of choice disempowered me to the point where I’m sure it was a factor in the depression itself. “I found the relationship between the psychiatrist and patient quite patronising. They are the ones with the knowledge and power. Yet, all the assumptions on which I was being prescribed medication were very challengable – but it’s difficult to do so when you’re at a very vulnerable point.”

He says he would have liked to have been listened to about what he felt would work in his case – but says there was little leeway outside of the medical approach. After exploring options on his own, he found psychotherapy “infinitely more helpful”.

“The most helpful therapists were those with the most empathy. That was almost totally absent from psychiatry, in my experience.” Tighe hasn’t used drugs for about two years. He has serious reservations about psychiatric medication, but accepts that some people find them helpful. “You can’t generalise. Everyone’s different. In my case, I was told I may have to take them for the rest of my life, so I feel an enormous sense of relief now that I made a choice to stop taking them.”

Tighe is now putting the finishing touches to an album and stage production called Record, which will draw on his experiences of the mental health system. It will premiere at the Cork Midsummer Festival on June 25th and will go on to tour nationally. “The material uses my starting point of diagnosis and examines the area of emotional distress and ideologies around psychiatry, and looks towards a new way of conceptualising emotional distress . . . I feel I’ve made huge progress in coming to my own understanding of my experiences, which has been very empowering and enlightening.”

Published on Jan 6, 2015

RESOLUTION is a creative exploration of life from people who have met adversity and challenge with courage and compassion. People who are living from the inside out…

Dylan Tighe’s debut album Record, inspired by his personal experiences of emotional distress and of the mental health system, was released in February 2014 to widespread acclaim. The Sunday Times declared Dylan an “exquisite songwriter”,while RTÉ proclaimed the album “starkly brilliant” and “a deeply personal and deeply moving piece of work”. The Irish Times described it as “brimming with tunes” and “an audacious and seriously intelligent suite of songs. Dylan has also worked extensively as an actor and theatre-maker, winning the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Production in 2010 for his production ‘No Worst There is None’ inspired by the ‘dark sonnets’ of Gerard Manley Hopkins. His stage production Record based on songs from the album at Cork Midsummer Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival was described by the Irish independent as proposing “a new theatrical form for a new way of thinking”.

A radio version for RTÉ, featuring songs from the album and challenging a scientific view of mental health, was nominated for the Prix Europa prize 2014. He has recently contributed a chapter entitled ‘Start Making Sense’ to ‘Madness, Psychiatry, and Performance’, newly published by Palgrave. A new work for radio- ‘Pulse Music/ Ceol Cuisle- about the poet Michael Hartnett and created in collaboration with musician Seán Mac Erlaine, was recently broadcast on RTÉ.
Dylan

Theatre-Maker and musician Dylan Tighe uses his own psychiatric history to probe some of the assumptions underpinning a scientific view of mental health. The play proposes artistic expression, and lived experience- as capable of offering insights into the mind (and heart) which science cannot penetrate. This alternative record of mental health centres around Dylan Tighe’s psychiatric records and personal research and includes songs from his debut album RECORD exploring his diagnosis and experience, along with a collage of sonic and musical sources, documentary, dramatic scenes and archive samples relating to the science behind the concept of “mental illness”

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“…by the time he was 19, they dragged him to a psychiatrist, who prescribed an antipsychotic drug, a tranquilizer and an antidepressant…”

“He wasn’t someone who was living in the real world.”

“…He said the family had taken Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel to a doctor who prescribed medication to counter his depression, but described his son as “always alone, always depressed” and not wanting to talk..”

Mental illness (whatever that is) is not to blame for many of these violent acts. The common denominator in many cases like these is psychiatric drugs (known to cause dangerous, often violent side effects).

Check out the website- Antidepaware for hundreds of documented cases of psychiatric drug induced violence. And check out madinAmerica for brilliant articles from many highly respected and educated people (working in the mental health arena) willing to speak out about these dangerous psychiatric drugs…

What ‘medication’ was the Nice Attacker ( Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel) prescribed over the years? what psychiatric drugs was he on before or during the attack?

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Psychiatric Meds: Prescription for Murder?

In a frenzied cry for gun-control, the media is rife with details about the firearms Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and six adults before turning a handgun on himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012. But information about Lanza’s medical history is scarce, feeding speculation that he may fit the profile of school shooters under the influence of psychotherapeutic medication.

“In virtually every mass school shooting during the past 15 years, the shooter has been on or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs,” observed Lawrence Hunter of the Social Security Institute. “Yet, federal and state governments continue to ignore the connection between psychiatric drugs and murderous violence, preferring instead to exploit these tragedies in an oppressive and unconstitutional power grab to snatch guns away from innocent, law-abiding people who are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution the right to own and bear arms to deter government tyranny and to use firearms in self defense against any miscreant who would do them harm.”

There is a striking connection between school shootings and psychotherapeutic drugs, also known as psychotropics. Consider these examples:

• Toby Sincino, a 15-year-old who shot two teachers and himself in 1995 at his South Carolina school, was taking the antidepressant Zoloft.

• Kip Kinkel, an Oregon teen who murdered his parents and proceeded on a shooting rampage at his high school in 1998, killed two and wounded 25 while in Prozac withdrawal.

• Shawn Cooper fired two shotgun rounds in 1999 at his Idaho high school while on an antidepressant.

• T.J. Solomon, Jr. was 15 years old when he shot six classmates in Atlanta in 1999. He was taking Ritalin and was also being treated for depression.

• Eric Harris was one of the assailants at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. His autopsy revealed a therapeutic level of the antidepressant Luvox in his system.

• Jason Hoffman wounded five people with a shotgun at his California high school in 2001 while on two antidepressant medications, Celexa and Effexor.

• Jeffrey Weise, a student at Red Lake High School in Minnesota, killed 10 and wounded seven in 2005 while on Prozac.

• Matti Saari, a college student in Finland, shot and killed 10 people before committing suicide at his university in 2008. The Finnish Ministry of Justice later reported he was taking an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety medication.

• Steve Kazmierczak killed six including himself at Northern Illinois University in 2008 while in withdrawal from the antidepressant Prozac.

• Tim Kretschmer murdered 15 students and teachers at his secondary school in Germany in 2009, and then committed suicide. Police reported Kretschmer was taking prescriptions to treat depression.

A 2002 Fox News interview with Cory Baadsgaard sheds some light on the possible mental state of these criminals. The year before, at age 16, Baadsgaard held a high-school class hostage at gunpoint in Washington state. Fortunately, no one was killed or physically hurt during the incident. The young man remembers the day in this way: “In the morning I didn’t feel like going to school. I felt sick; didn’t feel like I could get up very well. So I went back to bed. And the next thing I remember I’m in juvie in the detention center where I used to live.” Baadsgaard says he has no memory of the incident. He was tried as an adult but spent only 14 months in prison because expert psychiatric testimony convinced the jury his crime was the result of adverse reactions the antidepressants Effexor and Paxil.

Despite the abundance of such evidence and a glut of scientific studies proving real danger, “there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence,” according to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI), a non-profit mental health watchdog group. CCHRI states that government officials are well aware of the connection. “Between 2004 and 2011, there have been over 11,000 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drug side effects related to violence,” including 300 homicides. The FDA estimates this total is less than 10 percent of the actual number of incidents since most go unreported.

However, there has been little government action at all, with one exception. Due to the “large body of scientific research establishing a connection between violence and suicide and the use of psychotropic drugs,” the New York State Senate introduced a bill in 2000 to “require police to report to the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), certain crimes and suicides committed by persons using psychotropic drugs.” The bill died in committee, and the issue remains unresolved.

Instead, in response to the Sandy Hook tragedy and ignoring the obvious, Senator Toni Nathaniel Harp and Representative Toni E. Walker, both Democrats of the Connecticut General Assembly, introduced Bill 374, “requiring behavioral health assessments for children,” mandating psychiatric testing for public school students in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 and for homeschooled children at ages 12, 14, and 17. The assessments would have to be reported to the State Board of Education, and there is great likelihood that more children would end up on psychiatric meds after such tests.

There is also plenty of official agitation for gun control. Hunter suggests instead, “It is pharmaceutical makers, not law-abiding gun owners or gun manufacturers, who should be held to account for the series of ‘lone-wolf’ mass shootings that have occurred since the widespread use of psychiatric drugs began.”

Drugs on the Firing Line

Antidepressants are psychiatric drugs that form a common thread in school shootings. There are five categories of anti depressants: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI), tricyclic antidepressants (TCA), and atypical antidepressants. Despite the moniker, doctors prescribe these medicines for much more than depression. They use them to treat such ailments as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bipolar disorder, bulimia nervosa, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder (SAD), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Other suspect medications, such as Ritalin, Adderal, and Concerta, are sympathomimetic amines, prescribed to treat ADHD.

These medicines act on the body’s nervous system — altering its chemical communication pathways to affect areas of the brain involved in judgment, abstract reasoning, memory, emotions, and the fight-or-flight response — explains Michelle Morrison-Valfre, MHS, FNP in her 2005 book, Foundations of Mental Health Care. The expected result is a calm mood and clear thinking. However, in some cases unexpected results occur.

The Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR), an authoritative source of all FDA-approved drug labeling information, identifies the potential hazardous side effects of psychotherapeutics, including suicidal and homicidal ideation. Unfortunately, such effects are not uncommon. In fact, when taking a particular medication poses serious risks, the FDA requires drug manufacturers to highlight the dangers in eye-catching boxes on pharmaceutical packaging. A drug’s “black box warning” alerts consumers to the major hazards they face when taking that medicine. Most prescriptions do not have black box warnings — only those that can cause extreme adverse reactions compared to the potential benefit. Among psychotherapeutics’ black box warnings are:

• “Increased risk of suicidal ideation in short-term studies in children and adolescents with ADHD.” (Strattera, SNRI)

• “Antidepressants increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in short-term studies in children, adolescents and young adults with major depressive disorder and other psychiatric disorders.” (Zoloft, SSRI)

• “Monitor appropriately and observe closely for clinical worsening, suicidality or unusual changes in behavior for all patients who are started on antidepressant therapy.” (Parnate, MAOI)

Additionally, all depression and ADHD therapies contain FDA-mandated warnings for caregivers to monitor for suicidal thinking, worsening of depression symptoms, and unusual changes in behavior. Patients taking the tricyclic Elavil are cautioned to “seek medical attention for symptoms of mania, increasing psychosis or paranoia.” Literature warns parents of children on Ritalin that “stimulants at usual doses can cause treatment emergent psychotic or manic symptoms (hallucinations, delusional thinking, mania) in children and adolescents without prior history of psychotic illness.” (Emphasis added.) The PDR also reports clinical trials have identified aggressive behavior and hostility as notable side effects of ADHD medications.

The advent of these drugs coincides disturbingly with a rise in the adolescent suicide rate. Ritalin was introduced in 1956. Antidepressants made their debut in the early 1960s, according to Morrison-Valfre, who noted elsewhere in her text that statistics from the U.S. Bureau of the Census reveal, “from 1960 to 2000 the rate of adolescent suicide more than doubled.” This may be coincidental, but it is unnerving in light of these drugs’ well-known adverse effects.

One thing, however, is certain. Prior to the advent of antidepressants, there was little relation between depression and violent behavior. “One of the things in the past that we’ve known about depression is that it very, very rarely leads to violence,” observed psychiatrist Peter Breggin in a Fox News report. “It’s only been since the advent of these new SSRI drugs that we have murderers, sometimes even mass murderers, taking antidepressant drugs.”

Dr. Breggin is an expert in the mental health field and an outspoken critic of psychiatric drug overuse. Among his more than 20 books on the topic is Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008), in which he recounts a significant clinical trial involving children taking Prozac. Fourteen percent of the study’s subjects became aggressive and even violent on the drug, but the experience of a 12-year-old boy is particularly disturbing. Quoting the study, Breggin writes:

Thirty-eight days after beginning the protocol, F. experienced a violent nightmare about killing his classmates until he himself was shot. He awakened from it only with difficulty, and the dream continued to feel “very real.” He reported having had several days of increasingly vivid “bad dreams” before this episode; these included images of killing himself and his parents dying. When he was seen later that day he was agitated and anxious, refused to go to school, and reported marked suicidal ideation that made him feel unsafe at home as well.

Breggin notes the boy cannot be labeled a copycat since the study was conducted in 1991, long before the highly publicized school shootings of more recent years. Once the child stopped taking Prozac, his symptoms disappeared.

The Drug Pushers

Instead of investigating psychiatric drugs’ connection to acts of mass violence, public policymakers and healthcare professionals actually promote the use of psychotropic drugs by children and adolescents. The New York Review of Books published a June 2011 review by Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, called “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” She summed up the problem saying:

The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007 — from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six. For children, the rise is even more startling — a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades. Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children, well ahead of physical disabilities like cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, for which the federal programs were created.

Angell relates that psychiatric treatment shifted from “talk therapy” to drug therapy in the 1950s when doctors noticed new drugs meant to treat infections also “blunted disturbing mental symptoms” by affecting the levels of certain chemicals in the brain. Out of that observation was born the theory that mental illness is a result of chemical imbalances. “Thus, instead of developing a drug to treat an abnormality, an abnormality was postulated to fit a drug,” observed Angell. “That was a great leap in logic.” She noted that subsequent studies have proven such chemical imbalances do not in fact exist in patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders such as depression. It is only after a person takes a psychiatric medication that the brain begins to function abnormally.

Moreover, diagnosing mental illness is largely a subjective endeavor, unlike other fields of medicine that rely on objective lab data or scans and x-rays for diagnosis. So says psychiatrist Daniel Carlat in his 2010 book Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry — A Doctor’s Revelations About a Profession in Crisis. “Our diagnoses are subjective and expandable, and we have few rational reasons for choosing one treatment over another,” admits Carlat.

Eager to exploit the benefits of the chemical theory and aware of the “subjective and expandable” nature of diagnosing mental illness, drug companies vigorously subsidize the psychiatric profession. In his 2010 exposé Anatomy of an Epidemic, Robert Whitaker notes that besides the gifts and fringe benefits given directly to psychiatrists, especially those at influential academic centers, drug companies generously support psychiatric associations, patient advocacy groups, and educational organizations. They fund around one-fifth of the budget of the American Psychiatric Association. In the first quarter of 2009 alone, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly donated more than $1.2 million to mental health non-profits.

Angell goes on to explain how drug companies peddle their wares. In order to have a drug approved, pharmaceutical manufacturers must submit to the FDA two clinical trials proving a product more effective than a placebo. Drug companies can perform as many trials as they wish in order to achieve the two successful tests they need. Positive studies are highly publicized while the negative are suppressed. In a review of tests for the six most widely used antidepressants between 1987 and 1999 — Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor — Angell reported, “Most of them were negatives. Overall, placebos were 82 percent as effective as the drugs.… The average difference between drug and placebo … was clinically meaningless.”

Convinced by positive reports of the drugs’ benefits, doctors prescribe them liberally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention divulged in 2011 that 11 percent of Americans age 12 years and over take antidepressant medication. CDC statistics also revealed a 400-percent increase in the rate of antidepressant use in the United States between 1988 and 2008. As of 2008, antidepressants were the most frequently used drug by persons aged 18-44 years.

The problem is not confined to the United States. Last year the Guardian reported prescriptions for Ritalin in the U.K. quad rupled from 2000 to 2010, and between 2006 and 2010 the United States witnessed an 83-percent increase in sales. The U.K.’s Association of Educational Psychologists complains that physicians are ignoring the professional union’s recommendation not to prescribe ADHD medication to most children under age six. “We need to show young people how to deal with the normal stresses and strains of growing up,” argues Member of Parliament Tessa Munt. “Resorting to powerful drugs only stores up trouble for the future.”

The University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center says that Ritalin is currently prescribed to approximately six million people in the United States, of which 75 percent are children. Its data also confirm between 30 and 50 percent of adolescents in drug treatment centers report abusing Ritalin. And because of the medication’s similarity to cocaine, once these teens reach adulthood they are more prone to cocaine addiction.

Angell acknowledges the long-term effects of psychiatric drugs have yet to be proven. But she quotes several psychiatric researchers, including a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, who contend that by upsetting normal brain chemistry, these medications cause brain cells to become desensitized to or overcompensate for the disturbances the drugs cause. In other words, the drugs can trigger chemical imbalance where none existed in the first place, hence the emergence of adverse effects like mania and suicidal/homicidal ideation, especially when a psychotropic drug is first started or stopped. Other research shows a relation between these drugs and brain atrophy, an often irreparable decrease in the size and number of brain cells.

The Connecticut Case

Fox News reported, after an initial search of Lanza’s home, investigators found no indication the 20-year-old was taking prescriptions. Other evidence suggests he was. Louise Tambascio, a friend of Lanza’s mother, told CBS News’ Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes, “I know he was on medication and everything.” ABC News also interviewed Tambascio, who repeated, “I knew he was on medication.”

Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, is currently conducting toxicology exams to determine if Lanza was using any behavior-modifying drugs. Many think it likely. Days after the Sandy Hook massacre, standing outside Lanza’s home, CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta commented, “What medications was he on? I’m specifically talking about antidepressants. If you look at the studies of other shootings like this that have happened, medications like this were a common factor.” In a December 16 Fox News interview, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge also warned of the undeniable link between youth violence and psychiatric drugs.

Most media choose to ignore such warnings and even downplay the obvious. The Associated Press published a January 11 report entitled, “Connecticut shooting: Medical examiner says gunman’s body won’t reveal much.” It claims that “Connecticut’s chief medical examiner says he doubts toxicological tests and genetic analysis of the body of the gunman who fatally shot 20 children and six educators at an elementary school will explain his actions.” In a glaring contradiction the same article later notes, “The toxicology exam, which could take several weeks, involves testing body fluids for psychiatric medications or illegal substances. Carver said the result could provide ‘potentially valuable information’ in creating a full picture of Lanza.”

Meanwhile, government officials and anti-gun activists continue to use the tragedy in the Constitution State to deprive Americans of the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Whether Adam Lanza’s toxicology tests reveal psychiatric medications were involved in his rampage is not likely to deter their frenzied zeal.

Like this:

For decades, scores of doctors, government officials, journalists, and others have extolled the benefits of psychiatric medicines for children. GENERATION RX presents “the rest of the story” and unveils how this era of unprecedented change in Western culture really occurred — and what price has been paid by our society.

International award-winning filmmaker Kevin P. Miller (Let Truth Be The Bias, The Promised Land) “delivers a jaw-dropping emotional ride,” and “weaves a terrifying tale of criminal conspiracy, the mass abandonment of medical ethics, and the routine betrayal of an entire generation.” By employing the expertise of internationally respected professionals from the fields of medicine, ethics, journalism, and academia, GENERATION RX investigates collusion between drug companies and their regulatory watchdogs at the FDA and focuses on the powerful stories of real families who followed the advice of their doctors — and faced devastating consequences for doing so.

This is a massive subject, and I am living a very difficult life at this time which is interfering with my writing. So, I have to rough this out. This report is based mainly upon information I gathered during a study of antidepressants I did in 2008/09. This was the study that netted the classified documents from GSK
This is the first section of this report.

I will do this report one section at a time, and the steps will be:

1. Testimonies of people destroyed by antidepressants

2. The chemistry of the various antidpressants, and which dangerous substances in everyday life they deliver directly to the brain – Yes, you heard that right, there are several that do nothing more than deliver modeling glue and other nasty aromatic hydrocarbons straight to your brain, and KEEP THEM THERE. Several would be replaced well by a gasoline inhaler attached to a backpack that you carry with you – (pill form is easier though) and others, like Prozac, are derived from fluoride. Antidepressants deliver a very stable but FILTHY high until you fry, and the hydrocarbon based ones cause exactly the same damage you get from working in a paint booth without a respirator. I HAVE PROOF.

3. The visible physical damage antidepressants cause and how and why it occurs, including osteo porosis, calcification of the brain, brain shrinkage, destruction of white matter, corkscrewed axons, liver and other organ damage, and some interesting ancedotes related to this;

4. The motivation for attempting to destroy the entire population of a nation with these substances, and an expose of the corruption in the FDA, the medical community, the Jewish connection, the banker/Rothchild/Rockefeller/facist connection, the future slave state, how the research SSRI’s are based on was done in Russia and imported to America in the form of Prozac, and the proposed finalization of the destruction of Western civilization which “antidepressants” will play a central role in.

5. A detailed exposure of why antidepressants destroy bonding relationships, and make it impossible for anyone to fall permanently in love for REAL, with a little side attachment explaining the reasons for why specific brands destroy sex in different ways. – I actually have the line by line answers for EACH BRAND, and which part of the brain they ruin to often permanently destroy sex in different ways. Different brands destroy different pathways, but all are effective in wrecking sex.

6. How they get away with hurting so many people under the supposed cover of doing good, and the methods put in place to avoid being sued, imprisoned, and hung. What WE need to do to forever expose this scam, and make sure they are sued, imprisoned, and hung. I have the answer to EXACTLY how we can blow this open and hang them.

SO, due to the hacks and deletions I am constantly fighting, here is a rather rough start. It’s obvious from all that has transpired that this is a stab at the root of the worst evil, this is going to piss them off more than anything.

Prescribed Deletion – testimonies of the destroyed.

These are the words of those who have been destroyed by antidepressants. If you are among them, STOP listening to your P-doc telling you it never happens; the reality is that they ALL know it happens and they are lying to you. View this chart, and READ THE RESULTS THAT FOLLOW.

These are testimonies of people destroyed by antidepressants.

– – – – – –

“Whoever said that they lost most their ability to love; MAN, that is the thing I miss the most. I was a very, very, very passionate person prior to celexa. I was passionate about everything, my marriage, my job, my country. I couldn’t hear our national anthem without stopping and feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. 14 years in the Army National guard, I was very into my career with them too. I was passionate about running, about my relationship with (and this will probably sound wierd) my dog. I miss all of these things. I hope they all come back to me. They were very much the bricks in the foundation of my life and I feel like they are gone. When I say I want the old me back, I mean the person who was passionate, the person who loved and was loved. The driven person who saw what he wanted and went out and got it. That was all taken from me with the introduction of Celexa in my life. I just want it back.”

– – – – – –

“I’ve been in an extremely peculiar state for the past 8 months after stopping Wellbutrin/buproprion. I have literally lost everything inside of me and no longer have a sense of “inner being”. My personality has been completely erased, along with the inner psyche I’ve spent a lifetime building. When I attempt to “look inside”, it is impossible because there is literally nothing there. Everything that made up my specific sense of personal being is gone, including including my hopes, fears, dreams, goals, opinions, values, morals, likes/dislikes, and most strikingly, all emotions and feelings.

I have no feelings associated with past events, and no emotional connections with anything in the world. Specific emotions that defined my personal sense of being are no longer there. People, places, things and events that I thought were etched in my soul as having significance no longer mean a thing. Absolutely nothing, I can’t stress this enough.

I am unable to look backward or forward, have no sense of past accomplishments and no desire for future ones. The strangest thing is, I cannot feel anything toward being in this state, as that part of me is gone too. It’s like a recursive erasure of everything I ever was, am, and will be.

It doesn’t feel like life is a conscious experience that I am having anymore, as there is no inner construct within me to absorb an experience on any level. I see, hear, touch, and smell, yet each of these is so devoid of emotional content that they don’t coalesce into anything meaningful I can call a human consciousness. My sense of being has been replaced by a constant void of nothingness that is unchanging, 24/7, I feel nothing towards the nothingness. It is not like feeling empty inside, there is no inside to feel empty within.

Getting to this state was a long process that started with gradually losing my emotions. This started when I decided to withdraw from the antidepressant Wellbutrin/Bupropion which I’d been on a high dosage of for 5 years. Strangely, going back on it did not help, but made things worse. When I stopped and started the drug a second time, I experienced one tremendous day of improvement followed by a seizure while sleeping, and woke up in a confused state. After this I regressed and felt completely dead inside.

This waking up in a confused state happened 2 more times, once in May 2010 and once in September 2010. Both of these were preceded by sudden improvements. But upon waking I felt like I had lost a basic part of my self. Not just feelings, but the core of my being. What I felt to be the complete and final destruction of my inner being happened on September 7th, 2010, and there hasn’t been a change since (it has now been 8 months).

– – – – – –

“I tell you, I never had a problem before celexa. I just want to be back to me. I want to no longer be the pitiful creature it made me. I want to be me. The old me. I want myself back. Life isn’t worth living with this new person holding my thoughts and feelings hostage. I have been off Celexa since last year. I JUST WANT ME BACK.”

“I have been on 0 mgs for almost a year, and my emotional state has yet to come back to normal. (normal me). I have been from Psyc doc to Psyc doc (never needed before celexa) to try to figure it out. They point the problem back to me. I found out by reading around the Internet, and buying the book “Prozac: Panacea or Pandora” by doctor Ann Blake Tracy, and I found out that several people, if not all people, who go off these drugs experience exactly what I have experienced. When Natalie wrote what she wrote, you can go back to some of my earlier posts and the withdrawal effects are written down almost verbatim. These are bad for our brains, they change our personalities. I want my life back, and don’t want even my worst enemy to experience what I have been through. These people have no love for their fellow man. We need to, no matter how emotionally messed up we are, we need to band together and prevent them (a commercial for Cymbalta just came on the tv, made my blood boil) from prescribing them to ANYONE. Depression hurts said the commercial, I never knew depression till after celexa. I have been through hell, therefore hell exists.”

– – – – – –

“What I don’t understand is how a drug could completely erase me as a human being. What I’m experiencing is not depression, anhedonia, or flat affect, but a permanent change in my consciousness that literally destroyed my humanity. All the parts that made up my being are literally gone. I don’t understand how this is even possible, or what (if anything) I can do to change it.”

– – – – – –

“I’m 25 yrs old. I used to be a bodybuilder, avid fisherman, used to drag race, and enjoy the great outdoors. USED TO.

I was on effexor for about 3 yrs, 75mgs. I decided I wanted to stop taking it, I felt fine. Im 25 I said and I can deal with lifes problems.

I told my doc if I may discontinue the drug he said sure, if you want to. Doctor didn’t even ask me if I wanted to wean off, I suggested him to give me the 35mgs, but he gave me only a weeks worth.

I have never in life felt so sick. I would not wish this on anyone, not even my enemy. The first 3 months were hell. dizziness, nausea, fatigue, bad memory, brain zaps, you name it I had it. I couldnt even walk sometimes.

I fought and fought and it is now 7 months that I am clean off this horrible so called drug.

To this day, 7 MONTHS later, I am left with weakness, bad memory, and horrible coordination.

I can no longer workout, all my muscles went down, I have no energy to do what I liked to do in my life. I cannot function or remember things at work. I am useless. If it wasn’t my cousins place, I would have been fired along time ago.

I am not depressed, I don’t have panic attacks.

In my opinion, Effexor has left me permanent damage. I have been through more tests than you can think of. blood tests upon blood tests for every disease known to man.

This drug has changed my life for the worse and everynight i cry, because I feel that this medicine has severly left me damaged. My doctor has no idea what to do.”

– – – – – –

“I was prescribed Zoloft 25-50mgs 9 years ago while I was in college.

Before I begin with the nightmare, let me stress I WAS NOT SICK when I started this drug. I had anxiety (situational )and was a little tired. That is it. Other than these issues, I was as healthy as a horse, never been in the hospital, rarely if ever needed to go to the doctor. I was very active and on the go.

Well, Zoloft worked immediately, what can I say. I loved it. Loved it loved it loved it. I thought it was a gift from God, saved me and my college career. I wasn’t as shy as I had been. I felt more social.

But then I found I could not get off without severe head pain and brain zaps. So, I stayed on it. Every few months I would think about going off again, but the symptoms I would get kept me on it, and very afraid to come off. So, I stayed on it for 8 long years. (I forgot to mention I gained 25 pounds within the first 3 months on it. That was another reason I wanted off).

After 8 years, I’d had enough. I felt like I no longer needed it, I had been long out of college and the original situations that gave me anxiety were long gone. So, at my doctors advice, I tapered over about 3-4 weeks.

Then my life was shattered. Completely shattered.

I was told the withdrawal would only last a week or two at most, so I rode it out. It never went away and only kept getting worse. So, I gave up and tried to go back on. I couldn’t take the symptoms anymore. But my body was having none of that. Strangely, now when I took Zoloft, my body and brain reacted badly, as if it were rejecting it. I got a fever and felt like I was dying. I had no choice but to get off again. I was given other SSRI’s, but none of them helped either, and all of them made me worse. I no longer tolerated meds like I did prior to Zoloft.

I kid you not, here I am 3 YEARS later and still very ill, and it all began when getting off Zoloft. Here is what I suffer 24/7…..

severe head pain and pressure
brain zaps/ electrical zaps shooting through brain down to toes
burning in extremities and brain
severe fatigue and weakness
dizziness/vertigo
severe depression ( never was depressed, ever, until coming off Zoloft )
severe anxiety
panic attacks…BAAAAD
daily crying jags
skin eruptions and
bone and muscle pain
burning tongue
insomnia
digestive pain
cramping on right side under rib cage
hair loss
sensitivities to food and medications previously tolerated well
extremely sensitive to vitamins and minerals previously tolerated well
no motivation / severe apathy
loss of career and income/ on disability
derealization/ depersonalization
back and neck spasms
unable to drive, shop, or eat out
increased allergies to things once tolerated well ( smoke, dust, cats )
suicidal thoughts….pretty regularly and very scary
nightmares
jaw pain from clenching teeth ( I guess from severe stress )
agoraphobia…very heartbreaking since I used to be so busy
ears ringing
feeling like being hit it the back of the head with a shovel
pressure in chest, like a 100 elephants are sitting on me
racing pulse, even when resting
increased blood pressure and cholesterol
metallic taste
bladder spasms
loss of cognition/ mental function ( feels like I lost 50 IQ points )
difficulty concentrating and recalling facts

I wrote a letter to Pfizer, detailing my story and my symptoms. They blew me off and wanted a doctors opinion of what my illness is from. No doctor will admit to Zoloft being the cause of this illness, so Pfizer pretty much told me they take no responsibility. They ruined my life, and take no responsibility. They train their drug reps to educate doctors that these drugs are harmless. They know better, but rake in too much money to do anything about it.

They do not care how many lives they destroy, as long as they continue making their billions off innocent victims.”

– – – – – –

“My withdrawal from Seroxat/Paxil (a few years ago, now). I became very aggressive on the stuff (many arrests and court appearances), and on some days I could pop valium like smarties without it making the slightest bit of difference. When I decided it would be a clever move to stop taking it and put up with a few days of flu-like symptoms, I found out what withdrawal was really like.

I slashed at my arms, I rolled around on the floor, screaming, because everything felt raw (my theory is that we ‘normally’ perceive the world through a comfortable haze of endorphins–which was stripped away) and when the police were called I freaked out completely and brandished a knife at them.

My husband referred to that state as being ‘animalistic’.

Needless to say, I escaped jail by a hair’s breadth. When I ended up in ER, following a dose of pepper spray in my face, I begged for Seroxat and the doc just laughed in my face and said they weren’t running a pharmacy. They did not believe there was such a thing as SSRI/SNRI withdrawal syndrome. I think they still don’t.

In the cell, waiting for the court appearance, I had the worst shakes and weird feelings (derealisation, having two heads, having my head swell to the size of a water melon). The junky I shared the cell with said: “Wow, what are you on?”

– – – – – –

I was put on zoloft, and when I stopped taking it I became disoriented didn’t remember anything for 3 days. Lost my systems design engineering job I had for 7 years with 21 succesful projects. Lost my income, lost my mind, lost my home, cars, family heirlooms retirement, etc.etc. It all happened after taking ZOLOFT. I was finally diagnosed with a form of epilepsy and put on anti siezure meds..Lamictal. The Zoloft stuff took place In the 3rd world state of Louisiana..no recourse..Louisiana SUCKS. I now live in Florida, I’m 100% disabled and doing somewhat better thanks to my wife and my 2 wonderful kids that stood by me during those nightmarish days. By the way..the state of louisiana does not recognize the brain as an organ according to one ambulance chasing Lawyer. It only counts as an organ during a lawsuit right after an accident. If there are problems 10 years later…too bad it is no longer relevent.

– – – – – –

The first time I tried to get off cymbalta, I tapered over two months. Three weeks after the last dose, I was still extremely affected. I almost lost my job (doctor-level position), I almost quit my job.

I had about two months of hell trying to get off it.

So I’d be trying to pick up my clothes to get dressed in the morning and it was like zap zap zap grip wall zap pick up shirt zap zap nausea zap sit back down zap. Then I’d be talking to someone at work and i’d have the zaps and want to say ‘oh just dont mind my nystagmus, nothing to worry about’

I don’t feel that pissed off about it all right now, I just wonderhow long it will take before the brain zaps go away for good

I think I might donate some money to some organization this year that lobbies for more disclosure to patients about this shit because my dr who first prescribed it to me said ‘Really? It causes vertigo in you? I am on it too and I get that too–I wonder what’s up with that.’.

Followup: I’m up to about 6 months since I was taking Cymbalta every day and I still have weird effects like those described above. It has gotten to be kind of a joke now and mostly I just get the weird vertigo zaps. I wonder if it is ‘permanent’ a lot.

It is a very distinct ‘zap’ and it feels way more sketchy and scary than the depression that caused me to go looking for an antidepressant.

– – – – – –

“The worst kind of hell imaginable. I was off of this drug for 4 months without a hint of relief from the withdrawl symptoms. I was scared for my life and at the same time wanted to die….. Furthermore, every doctor I saw told me that Paxil isn’t addictive. **FRUSTRATION** Hated it!”

– – – – – –

“Please consider this before commenting on antidepressants in a positive way.

About 10 years ago, the medical school at a major university began to notice a large number of cadavers coming in (for the medical students to work on) which had indented and calcified frontal lobes in their brains.

Puzzled by this, they went through the life history of each cadaver that had this anomaly, and discovered that in every case, the person had been on SSRI antidepressants.

The level of brain damage indicated that each of the cadavers had been lobotomized.

The people who drew the connection between the calcified and collapsed frontal lobes (the part of the brain which contains your soul) and antidepressants received offers of money to keep it secret, and when they chose to go public anyway, received anonymous death threats against their families and children if they ever went public.

I have seen many people get destroyed by antidepressants, all the while they said all was well. Invariably they go down the toilet as they eventually move toward complete and total emotional and personality flatline.”

– – – – – –

“I decided I did not want to be ruled by this drug. Under the supervision of my doctor over a two month period, I weened myself from cymbalta forever. Each time I went down to a smaller dose I got sick. I had headaches, brain zaps, nausea, flu-like symptoms, I blacked out, my memory would get worse, until the culmination of taking no Cymbalta at all. Fortunately my mother is retired and was able to stay with me- I was withdrawaling like I assume people do on heavy street drugs! I would go to sleep hoping I would not wake up and be in pain throughout the day. My pain would get worse as the day progressed and by 4:00 I could barely stand the headaches, nausea, the ear ringing, and brain zaps. It has been a year since I have been off of Cymbalta and I continue to have horrible headaches that get worse as the day progresses; my ears ring, and my vision is screwed up. I see little lights at night time. My memory is not what it used to be and when I tell my doctors that I think I was permanatley poisoned by cymbalta they look at me like I am crazy (and isn’t that the reason I went on the cymbalta in the first place?)”

– – – – – –

“I am on my 7th day of no Cymbalta after being on it for only 3 weeks. I went from 60mg to 30mg, no problem. Then 30mg to 15mg, by making my own pills from the 30mg. Brain Zaps started. Now since I am clean for 7 days the Brain Zaps are hell, I think I even blink when they hit me. Inside my head the Zaps sound like a chattering angry squirrel. The people that made this drug must have never tested it for withdrawals. I have terrible back pain, have trouble sleeping, and have even cried twice this week. I just took 50mg of benedryl and 1000mg of tylenol hoping I can sleep tonight. I also gained weight on the drug. Has anyone that dealt with the Brain Zaps stopped having them all together? They are so bad, I am afraid to drive, I now understand why some folks kill themselves coming off drugs like this one. If there is a happy ending, I would love to know about it. Almost forgot, Blood Pressure has gone thru the roof coming off this stuff.”

– – – – – –

“I will name the countless symptoms and probably unreversable brain damage I am living with after Effexor. There are good days in wich some of the symptoms won’t arise for exception of the pain. Those are the days I can be a mother and wife but still the shadow of the energetic person I was. Back in July all the symptoms hit me all at once. Blury vision, dizzy, letargic, high pitch ringing in my ears, exhaustion, pain all over my body, joints and muscles. Muscle twitching, slurred speech, urinary incontinence at times, hair lose in patches. It is impossible for me to normally work at any type of job now. I have states where I would forget what I am doing. I have times in wich I have a hard time controlling voluntary motor functions in my legs and arms (such as not being able to write, open a bottle or carry anything). Every now and then muscles will begin to twitch, then just stop, out of the blue. I became lethargic and have no energy to do anything. Not to mention times or days when I can not drive due to the chance that I would have an accident beacuse of the sudden blury vision or dizzines that make it dificult to see. Not to mention when I suddenly forget where I am going or doing.”

– – – – – –

Since I started taking effexor, My memory is going out the window. I am having trouble remembering things from yesterday, granted I haven’t always been the best to remember things. I have noticed that I am forgetting tasks at work, this has never happened. I find myself using an entire pad of sticky notes, and forgetting to complete the notes written.

I’ve been taking Effexor since last November, and I’ve been having memory problems. Even yesterday I can barely remember. It’s so difficult. Usually, I had a good memory but now it has gone down hill.

I’ve been on it for about 9 months, and the SAME thing is happening to me. i forget things daily, lose things often, and my attention span is like a 3 year old boy. my doctor also told me theyre not connected, but i KNOW they are, which is the main reason i’m coming off the drug now. i wishi would have been informed of all this before i got hooked on the stinking drug.

I have been experiencing memory loss for awhie also. I started taking Effexor spring 2005. Before that I had been taking Zoloft, which was not working for my anxiety and depression. I notice about 3-6 months into taking Effexor that my short term memory was playing tricks on me and the more I think about it the more I realize this drug has something to do with that. What should we do now? Does anyone else think we should be contacting the company and find out the truth about this being a side effect???

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“I have been on Celexa for almost three years. the results: lost a job and a marriage due to being so non complacent but gained 20 lbs. I skipped a few doses several weeks ago and decided it was time to wean myself off. I tapered down very quickly and am now dealing with the following withdrawal symptoms:

The aggression is the scariest part but now that I know almost everyone experiences this I feel better. From reading most of the posts it doesn’t seem to matter if you wean yourself or go cold turkey, the withdrawal symptoms appear the same.”

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I believe SSRIs “cause” neurogenesis through the brains compensatory mechanisms. By inducing a massive chemical imbalance at the synaptic level, SSRIs force the brain to respond by shutting down these connections and creating new ones (which then get shut down, and the cycle continues). Unfortunately, these new connections (axons) often resemble the type of new axonal growth (swollen/corksrew appearance) seen after recovery from a neurotoxic MDMA regimen. (editor’s note – MDMA is Ecstacy) These axons also often grow and/or project into areas where they did not before, and the significance of this is as of yet unknown.

8. After these brain damaging effects have sunken in, you may have great difficulty finding support anywhere. Talking to a p-doc may be an exercise in futility. They will want to protect their own interests and shield themselves from a possible lawsuit, hence you may be told continually to get back on meds/up your dosage. The more you protest, the less credibility you have, thus the more evidence in your p-doc’s mind that you need to go back on SSRIs.

9. Once you realize the extent of the damage, and it sinks in beyond the denial you may initially face, it will be hard to explain to others exactly why you are not the same person you used to be. The damage is similar to a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) yet it might be better termed DBI (Diffuse Brain Injury

The Canadian judge in the first North American criminal trial to find Prozac the sole cause of a murder ruled- “There is clear medical evidence that the Prozac affected his (defendant’s) behavior and judgment, thereby reducing his moral culpability.” Will those chilling words cause a small tremor in the writing hand of every prescriber of Prozac and other psychiatric medications from now on?

Such a chill in prescribing may happen when the impact of the Prozac murder verdict is combined with the recent Utah Supreme Court ruling (available in the Mad in America- “In The News” column.) That ruling, following another murder trial of a man on several psychiatric drugs, states that physicians can be held responsible for the actions of their patients. In the upcoming trial of the prescribers, the Supreme Court said they were not- “immunized from liability when their negligent prescriptions cause physician injury to non-patients.”

In the past few years, we have seen how the giant drug companies have been found guilty of wrong doing in their fraudulent marketing practices of psychiatric drugs. Billions of dollars of fines have been ordered by the courts. I believe that the companies cynically and criminally decided to incur these fines as a cost of doing business. It was part of their business plan.

For the individual prescibers of psychiatric medications that I worked alongside for 30 years, I never have sensed any reluctance to prescribe based on the concern that they may be called to testify in a murder trial. A murder trial where the drug they gave was seen by the judge as the cause of the murder.
That Prozac verdict which is not going to be appealed by the District Attorney changes everything.

The upcoming Utah Supreme Court trial where the court has already ruled that prescribers of psychiatric medications can be held responsible for the actions of their patients, adds to the huge shift in the landscape for anyone who prescribes.

The verdict in the Prozac case was based on the expert witness testimony of my friend Dr. Peter Breggin. He has been the most credible voice in the wilderness warning against the dangers of psychiatric drugs for decades. I know Peter grieves the loss of life through suicide and homicide caused by these drugs. Maybe now people will heed his warnings. A wise judge in Canada recently did, and prescribing psychiatric drugs will never feel the same to those with the pen and pad.